First a confession… I have not been an angler all my life. But after
wasting the first four years, I really struck it rich: I had some wonderful fishing
instructors. Forgive me, therefore, if I start by looking into the world of my fishing
dreams: a lost world, the ghost of Angling Past.
| What were we thinking of to allow this… 
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| …to become this? 
|
…and this? 
|
…and this? 
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They are rivers… but not as we knew them.
And yet these lunatic errors are repairable, if not truly reversible. The easy option
is to leave it to Mother Nature to heal her wounds.
This is all she has managed in the forty years since a Welsh river was dredged to
increase the productivity of farming: just a thin coating of moss and lichen on an
otherwise barren moonscape.
The alternative is hard work and a great deal of financial investment in the
Environment.
Perfection we have squandered. But river restoration can provide reasonably good places
to play and to learn. Here's one we remade earlier.
We will probably be able to do a lot more… but only if Angling survives.
Back to the future?
In the 1940s, this splendid fellow was in his prime. I am delighted to say he still is.
Through his cartoon characters Mr Crabtree and young Peter, Bernard Venables taught me -
and more than two million others - on how to fish. To be honest, he did not do a great job
of teaching me to catch fish - my fault, not his: I was so easily distracted by everything
around me.
And when Bernard gives me lessons nowadays it is still the same:
'Did you know, Pat, that ash trees sometimes have all male flowers or all female
flowers?' (The question is never put in an arrogant I know something you don't know kind
of way.)
'I seem to remember hearing something about that, Bernard. Is it really true?'
'Oh yes,' he says. 'But the most amazing thing is that an ash tree can be male one year
and female the next. And it can change sex several times; not just once, like a snail.'
Now you are either the sort of angler who finds that kind of thing fascinating or, well
to be frank you don't enjoy what I call the 'whole world of fishing'. If you do, there is
a countryside out there absolutely brimming with that kind of stuff, just waiting to be
learnt and marvelled at. That was the sort of angler Mr Crabtree produced: eager learners.
Some became pretty good at catching fish; the rest of us rose to the dizzy depths of
mediocrity. But we all learnt at least something about the wild flowers, frogs and water
voles (water rats, we called them then, and we saw them every day); about insect life and
the bats, birds and fishes that feed upon them; about the variety and interconnections of
habitats and how important it was to protect them. And we learned to respect the fish we
were trying to catch.
The other sort of angler - and there have always been some - could not care less what
was happening anywhere except on the end of his line. No fish; no fun. Small fish; big
con! Can anyone explain to me why these people don't simply join a tug-of-war team, where
they are guaranteed a really good pull every time? But in the 1940s, most anglers went to
the Mr Crabtree School of Fishing. They even picked up other people's litter. Well done
Bernard Venables, I say.
I remember Bernard's comment on the subject of bite detectors: 'I don't need an
infernal machine to tell me when it has done my fishing for me.' But he very happily
accepted carbon rods and plastic coated flyfishing lines. He was choosing his own future.
How many of us are doing so today?
How could any other tutor follow such a first? But hundreds have, all brilliant and
every one incredibly patient, if at times moody. Here in the UK as in Ireland, France,
Germany, Switzerland and many other countries, rivers were my wordless tutors, once my
eyes had been opened. Each river is unique and each has secrets it willingly shares with
those whose eyes and minds are open.
That phrase - eyes and minds open - encapsulates not only the potential but also the
peril of angling. Is our sport blundering blindly into the future with eyes closed to the
perils, mind closed to the problems?
Black for the future?
I have seen my future… I used to live there. It is just like the golden past when I
was a boy and the rivers I fished had wonderful fly hatches and even the most incompetent
flyfisher could catch a half-pound wild trout or two in the evening rise. I know he
could…I did. I have seen the future I want for angling, and I am pretty sure I could
find the way there, if only the path had not become so hopelessly overgrown with
impenetrable tangles of Indifference, Apathy, Neglect.
Indifference?
The correct term, I am told, for what has changed is Progress. 'Progress,' they say, 'is
unstoppable and surely irreversible. Don't listen to the moaning pessimists. Go fishing
instead; that is what most anglers do, and they are happy enough.
'No fish in the river? Then put some in. And when they die, put some more in. If you
don't like plastic litter in the trees, fish at night. Or learn to ignore it. Or better
still cut down the trees so there is nothing for the plastic to get trapped in; let it
drift on and blanket the seabed where it won't be a problem. And if the rivers run dry,
why waste your time pressing for winter storage and greater water efficiency? Move over to
well-stocked stillwaters where the fish are starving hungry, the 'sport' is fast and
furious, and you're much less likely to encounter distracting flora and fauna.'
Like playing darts with a crossbow. Great sport? I don't think so.
Apathy?
Another virulent weed blocking the path to Angling Future. In fishing, a pursuit with two
million participants in the UK, only a few hundred actually do anything to try to secure
its future. Evidence? Certainly! Once in every forty years or so, our Government offers us
the opportunity to overhaul our national policy and legislation. We are just coming to the
conclusion of a two-year Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Review. By the end of July it
will all be over, and Britain's politicians will then decide whether to take action, to
shelve the Review report for fifteen years (as happened last time) or to ignore it
altogether.
Despite much publicity in the angling press and other media, just one angler in every
10,000 - 0.01 per cent - took the trouble to say what sort of future they want for the
sport. Were the silent majority were leaving it to angling club secretaries and the
'angling governing bodies' to press their case for reform? Perhaps… But what does
that say for the one million anglers who do not pay dues to any angling body? Could they
not spare the time? They will have plenty of time to ask 'Why didn't somebody do
something?' when it is too late.
In comparison, ten per cent of the licensed salmon netsmen made written submissions to
the Fisheries Review. Humble netsmen they might be, but on that evidence they are a
thousand times less apathetic than anglers.
Neglect?
Indifference and apathy about the future we might, perhaps, be guilty of; but Neglect?
Surely not! How can we neglect something that doesn't yet exist?
It's the same as fishing itself, of course: it's all in the journey, not in the
arriving. And we have let the path to a better angling future become overgrown and almost
obscured by the cruel thorns of Neglect.
But I do have something positive to say. I shall not, therefore, bemoan the decades of
habitat restoration work we now have to face up to. Suffice it to say that we know how to
mitigate upland acidification; we have learned from Norway and Sweden. Thanks to
internationally co-ordinated research, supported by European Union LIFE funding, we also
know how to deal with many of the thousands of abandoned mines whose poisoned excretions
are pouring into rivers, lakes and canals (although at the present rate of progress it
will take many centuries to clean them up). In Germany, pumps continue when mines are
closed; a wise policy. We may face even tougher problems from chemical fertilisers,
insecticides and detergents; their long-term sub-lethal effects on wildlife might be more
serious even than the disastrous invertebrate mortality that so-called 'safe' sheep dips
have inflicted on rivers and lakes.
It is not too late to save the Atlantic salmon, but we do need urgent international
co-operation to close all high seas mixed-stock fisheries. In Europe, eels also appear to
be in serious decline. This is not a matter where each country should choose its own
solution; there is a single European eel stock. Europe-wide measures to protect elvers are
the only sensible way to respond to this threat. Such international co-operation will be
easier to secure if all governments recognise the true social, recreational and economic
value of healthy fisheries.
Why do I not see these problems as insurmountable obstacles? Because anglers could get
protection of the freshwater environment put wherever they want it on the political
agenda. If they care to use it, they already have the power… assuming, of course,
that more that 0.01 per cent of them vote. Most elections in Britain hang on considerably
less than two million votes. The same principle will apply in many other countries.
We must ensure that governments hear not a few whispers of dissatisfaction but a
co-ordinated clarion call for change. In the UK we need thousands of letters urging our
government to give us the legislative change and the environmental investment that the
Fisheries Review Group say is urgently needed.
Leaving national and international politics, I must return to the heart of the matter.
For if the heart is not functioning effectively, all plans for a healthy future are void;
indeed, there may well be no future at all.
Children are the life-blood of any sport. Lose the support of young people and we will
lose all. Parents may try to instil values and beliefs into their children, but influence
works both ways: youngsters can be tremendously influential, especially where their
non-angling parents are concerned. Already in Europe we have many millions of adults
opposed to fishing. Indeed, we may have reached the point where only their apathy is
saving us.
We also have some very determined and active opponents. These 'antis' have their own
vision of what angling is all about, and I wish I could say they are a load of incoherent,
ill-informed idiots. Not so! They are lucid, they are influential, and all too often their
criticisms are, in part at least, justified. We have to change that. In the battle for
public support, we could quite easily find ourselves runners up in a fight to the
death… unless we can also prove the antis wrong. And first we have to make them
wrong, by putting our own house in order. It is in a sad state of neglect.
Angling that has a future does not have fishermen on television hauling fish out of the
water and leaving them out, apparently gasping, while explaining how to prepare the most
irresistible bait cocktails - even if the fish are carp that can live for a day in a damp
sack. You know that and I know that… but, say the antis, do the carp want to know
that?
Angling that has a future has 'Anglers are the Waterside Guardians' as more than an
empty slogan. No angling litter, then? No smashing down natural flora to make the fishing
'more productive' (often just a euphemism for 'making the casting easier')?
Angling that has a future has 'Anglers are Conservationists' as a reality. Fur, fin or
feather, the conservation status of a species determining management priorities? No more
Feed the Cormorants on fish stuffed with Paracetamol headlines in angling newspapers?
But Angling will not regain public support simply by us not doing these kinds of
things. We have to do the positive things. And not just the positive self-interest things
that improve our own fishing, but things valued by other people - including non-anglers.
It is still just possible that Today's children might see something akin to natural,
healthy, self-sustaining fisheries when they are Bernard Venables' age. It is
possible… but only if the majority of inactive anglers can be convinced that there is
a problem and that they need to do something right now to help solve it. We will never
convince the rest of society if we fail to capture the imagination of the children. Let us
bring back the Mr Crabtree culture, the learning about wildlife, habitats and… yes,
hermaphrodite ash trees, if that's what it takes.
A ray of hope?
It is fifteen years since I began running flyfishing courses for children. The lessons are
free of charge, and so very well attended. Over a thousand children have joined in.
We certainly discuss safety and consideration for others. There are casting lessons.
The children collect and identify invertebrates from the river. They search for winged
insects among the bank-side vegetation and then choose flies to match what they see
'hatching'. They also list the trees, wild flowers and fungi found beside the river; the
birds too. Once in a while an otter or a water vole features on our Seen and Identified
list. They have also planted wild flowers on the banks of a feeder stream which, with the
co-operation of local farmers, we fence off to create buffer strips.
None of this work makes a great deal of difference to the productivity of a river
system with a thousand kilometres of feeder streams in need of protection, but it makes a
world of difference to the outlook of those children. And to the attitudes of their
parents.
I am proud of what the young people on my courses have achieved. By no means all of
them become anglers; none, however, is likely to oppose angling. And what do I hear them
talking about most, and most excitedly, weeks, months, even years after their course? Who
won the casting competition? No. The plump wild brown trout that one of them caught and so
carefully released? Never. Invariably it is about the many wondrous forms of river life
they found and can now identify. With the emphasis on learning, everyone is a winner.
© Pat O'Reilly
May 2000
